Steam Games Don't work Right On My External HDD

[Bilbo Saggins]

My family shares one computer, so it has a lot of stuff on it. Since my games take so much space, I migrated them over to my 1TB external hard drive. They were running fine for a while but all of a sudden whenever I try and play a game they take a while to load but they load fine nonetheless but when I try to load a match of Killing Floor 2, CSGO, or PUBG for example they crash.

Plz Help

[Hatman]

Scan the disc for errors, then defragment it. You can do both from rightclick>properties menu in windows explorer. Will take a while though.

PS: If Scandisc finds errors you may have to revalidate the game files from your steam library. Also means the HDD is dying and you should replace it soon. Sudden long loading times sound more like fragmentation though.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Run CHKDSK on the Drive(s)

Defrag if they are mechanical HDDs (non Flash/SSD types)

When a game completes an install or update, verify the game cache.

After installing a large game or update, defrag again (after the verify is completed)

Keep approx 10-15% drive space free at all times on a HDD, this helps as the drive needs space to move/re-locate files around the drive. If the free space is too low, it can't do that properly, and its performance comes to a crawl.